Sweet Jesus, Sony just won E3. It’s over. Mic is dropped. Microsoft is dead.
Even if the software lineup hadn’t been so spectacular – and it was – the 1-2 punch of the used games policy (i.e., they’re OK with it) and not needing a constant internet connection was utterly devastating. PLUS the $399 price point? BOOM. Game, set, match.
Shit, they very nearly sold me on the Vita. If they come out with a price cut or a bundle with the PS4, I’m in, no questions asked.
Let’s run down what they did cover, though – these are my hastily written notes (enhanced with my Twitter commentary):
Opening montage:
- The Last of Us
- Puppeteer (?)
- Rain
- Beyond
- Gran Turismo 6
All known quantities, for the most part, except Puppeteer, which looked colorful and also a little forgettable. Beyond remains enigmatic and weird; I want to like it, but I have no idea what the hell it is anymore.
Featured trailer
- Batman Arkham Origins – a little nervous. I mean, I’m happy to play more Batman, but that’s all this seems to be.
PS4 reveal:
- it looks like an Xbox Rhombus. This might be the most underwhelming part of the evening; the box looks a lot like the Xbox One, except tilted.
- Sony Entertainment integration. Why are they only getting around to this now? Seems like a no-brainer.
- new IP: The Order (which is less “steampunk” and more “wildly and randomly anachronistic” – no gameplay)
- Killzone: Crysis – er, ShadowFall
- Drive Club – don’t quite know what this is, but as a PSPlus member, I get it for free!
- Infamous Second Son – this looks great. Big fan of the first game, underwhelmed by the second. This looks like they took their time with it.
- Knack – got a weird Kameo vibe from it.
- Quantic Dream tech demo – “The Dark Sorcerer”
- Supergiant’s Transistor, which continues to look great.
Indie montage – and this was so great to see:
- Klei – Don’t Starve
- Tribute Games – Mercenary Kings.
- Young Horses – OctoDad
- Secret Ponchos
- Ray’s The Dead
- Oddworld! Lorne Lanning!
- Galak-Z (some sort of side-scrolling open-world space shooter! looks amazing)
Featured items:
- Diablo 3 – PS3/PS4 – with exclusive items. Meh. I played the shit out of it on PC and don’t need to go there again.
- Final Fantasy Versus XIII is now Final Fantasy XV and that trailer looked completely fucking insane.
- new Kingdom Hearts. Which is good for people who like Kingdom Hearts. My deep-seated loathing of Disney makes it impossible for me, but whatever.
- Assassin’s Creed 4 gameplay. As I missed the Ubisoft presser, this was all new to me. Still very wary of this franchise after the debacle of the last 2 games.
- Watch_Dogs gameplay. Looked great, as always. (For some reason, when I was trying to recall the footage just now, I got it confused a little bit with that new Tom Clancy’s game, The Division, which also looks incredible.)
- 2KSports NBA2K – hard to do a facial tech demo after that Quantic Dream “Dark Sorcerer” bit.
(Here’s where it started getting very, very interesting, and when Twitter started to explode.)
- Elder Scrolls Online?!! PS4 exclusive beta?
- Mad Max (by the Just Cause devs)
- Oh shit. Used Games are OK. Doesn’t need to be online. SHOTS FIRED, DIRECT HIT.
- World gameplay premiere of Bungie’s Destiny. Halo + Borderlands = awesome.
- $399?!!!
I need to sleep on this and process it. Because if I don’t, I will pre-order a PS4 right now with money that I don’t actually have.
Well played, Sony. Well played. You just won the shit out of E3.
Shouts From The Couch 
MS really screwed the pooch on this one. Happy to see Sony making the PS4 affordable.
I was going to reply to this saying that there was no way that Sony was going to let all games be open for trading and reselling. Now I wish I had said that, I’d be right.
Not so fast Fuzz. Sony left this fairly important bit of small print out of the conference, suggesting that while they won’t take any money from used games, the publishers might (and probably will). http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/06/11/e3-2013-ps4-used-game-restrictions-up-to-publishers
My comment still stands. Sony released that cheesy (and kind of awesome) tutorial video of how to lend games to a friend. They took the chance to take a jab at Microsoft and it turns out they are only slightly different. Everyone cheered and applauded them, but in truth it’s still very similar to what Microsoft is doing. Sony games are the exception, where Microsoft already came out to say they will charge. I saw this coming when EA dropped online passes a while back. They have to make that money back somewhere. They made a TON off online passes, they aren’t going to just give up that money. Microsoft isn’t going to do it if Sony isn’t on board. Microsoft just announced it first and became the whipping boy of the internet. Smart on Sony for completely putting it on the publisher. They become the bad guys.
The funny thing is, we have 5 months for one exec to say one thing and a different one to say something else. More info and more bad news are going to come out of both sides before these things launch.
At the end of the day they are both going to hurt the used game market, only Microsoft is making it easier on the publishers to do it. I personally don’t buy used games, but I do trade mine in. I’ll probably stop now because the amount we get per game is going to go down and I’d rather keep it. I’ll just have to be more picky on my game buying next gen. Hopefully these restrictions result in more steam like sales.